A Profile of the Artist
Martin Shough
Martin Shough, 53, has been painting in the Highlands of Scotland for 16 years. Whilst a schoolboy in Sussex he was selected for extramural classes at Brighton College of Art, preparatory to a degree course, but he turned to Lithography and studied instead at the London College of Printing. As a painter he is self-taught. An early interest in Fantasy subjects (he exhibited successfully at the 1980 World Science Fiction Convention at Brighton's Grand Hotel) gave way to a love of wild landscape, and after a spell on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, he fulfilled this by moving to the north of Scotland in 1989 and becoming a self-employed artist.
From 1993 - 2001 he worked from his own studio and gallery, the Kyle Gallery, on the wild north coast of Sutherland, selling hundreds of paintings to buyers from all over the world. He then moved to Perthshire for a time, exhibiting frequently in the Aiton Fine Arts gallery, Crieff, and elsewhere, before being drawn back to the northern Highland landscapes which are his inspiration. He now concentrates on watercolour, and lives and works in beautiful Strathconon in highland Ross-shire. Take a virtual tour of Strathconon.
He has also played Scottish/Irish music for many years, playing mandolin and other instruments in the folk group Rapscallion. Discovering a love of the fiddle (thanks to a spell with the Blackford Fiddle Group ceilidh band in Perthshire) he was gratified to learn recently that his maternal great-grandfather had been a fiddler from the Isle of Lewis who moved to England and played ceilidh tunes in the pubs of London! Some of Martin's music is available on CD here, where you can also find dowloadable midi files of tunes, song lyrics, and much else besides.